


The Puppetmaster

by Jenwryn



Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-04
Updated: 2009-06-04
Packaged: 2017-10-02 10:03:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/pseuds/Jenwryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aizen has won, and Neliel knows she's living an illusion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Puppetmaster

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the **bleachedblackk** fic exchange, over at LJ. The request was: "Would like: Anything involving the Karakura crew, Nel, or Aizen. Subtle horror. Do not want: Renji, mpreg, gag toys, OOC."

There are pine needles in her hair, dry and fine, and the ground beneath her feet is covered in them as well. She's running, running, running and, as she runs, she knows she's in a forest, the trees tall and dark above her. Impossibility has no part to play here: she knows, because she is _supposed_ to. The trees bend and sway like sentinels in the stillness, illogical; their branches pushing towards her, and away again. The very air is stained green by them, and it makes her hair greener, too, she thinks, with some disconnected part of her mind; strands fly around her face at the rhythmic beat of her running. The whole world is green, really. Green, dyed green, scented green – green from above, as the light pokes and prods its way through the tight-clinging trees – green from below, as her feet pound across the beds of old pine needles. Some part of her almost enjoys the way her blood pulses, behind her ears, in time with her feet.

A gush of wind, though, and she stumbles slightly. The ground has changed and she can feel it, without needing to look down, because it's turned sparse and has been laced with bitter prickles. Undergrowth scrapes its nails against the bareness of her legs, bitter herbs biting at her toes, and she gasps, gasps at the way this not-world she's locked in can so seamlessly change and betray her. The whip of stinging plants reminds her that she has no rights.

There's a scent curling beneath it all, too, as she runs faster, as she feels the muscles in her body shift and move, feels them all the tighter as she remembers that they don't fully exist. She can hear the child whimpering softly, in the back of her mind, mumbling and fussing, the way it does before it truly wakes. Neliel tries to ignore the sound, whispers something soothing that she doesn't believe herself, and runs. The scent is growing stronger, though, all dry dust and old bones, and Neliel Tu Oderschvank knows, in a sense, that she's the one who's dreaming. Not that knowing helps her any, seeing as how she's a dream herself, or less than a dream, or a dream sometimes clothed in flesh. She knows that, too. She's a thing of horns and knowledge, here but not here, like a character from one of the books she'd loved to read, back when she'd been _Tercera_. Oh, those books, with their pages so soft and brittle in her hands, because Hueco Mondo has never been kind to fragile things.

A dream, which lurks in the recesses of a child's mind.

And the child is waking ever-so-slowly.

Neliel runs, though she knows there is no door, and though she knows there is no exit.

_“Protect yourself; protect the child, for as long as you can.” _

Pesche's voice in her ears, dying.

After the Garganta had re-opened.

After Aizen had returned.

Victorious.

And had caught her up in a world of mirrors.

...the needles in her hair now scratch and sting.

She calls their names, though she hates herself for it, as the world begins to slide and twist, and the child moves closer to waking. _Pesche! Dondochakka! Pesche! _There's a funny ache inside of her, the slur of deja vu, as she walks the halls, her hollow hole ringing numb in her skin, and how did she get indoors, and when did the green vanish? Gone, the green, and everything is pale now; even her body seems bleached beneath the moonlight, her hair lighter and thinner. Home, she's home, she thinks, she says, she gasps it out in her thoughts, and it's a long time since he has brought her indoors – a long time since he's returned her mind to places she knows from her own experience, instead of the forests and mountains he recreates for his own pleasure. It makes her thoughts curdle, and she misplaces the past and the present, jumbles them up, soul stinging, and _where is her fracción? _

She sees them, in her mind. She sees them, but her mind is gone, and she remembers that now, as she steadies herself with her palm pressed against a curved white wall. The child is muttering to itself in her head. Neliel searches, but she can't find them, searches, but she doesn't even know what she's looking for.

It's all a game...

Illusions.

Aizen is a puppetmaster.

Her shoulders are against the wall, now, and there are cold fingers trailing their way along her shoulder – no, warm fingers, it's her skin that's cold – and she bends her head backwards to escape the horribly familiar pressure of fingertips and scraping thumb. The hand takes her movement as an invitation to slide itself up the length of her throat and Neliel_ knows_, knows where this is going, she's played this game before, and she knows the mirror shards slice as they etch scars on her insides.The fingers press against her, push on her throat roughly as she tries to swallow, as she tries to calm herself; their grasp tightens, and she wonders if he'll leave her here long enough for the bruise to form. She's grasping at the threads of her mind, hungering for the the clear oblivion that takes over when the child grows conscious, but wanting even more so to protect the child from this, from the clutch of the puppets Aizen plays with alongside of her – are they even real? others caught up by his hands? all figments of her mind? she doesn't know – because she knows that the games do not always stop, merely because the young one's mind takes over, and there are things she cannot let the child truly feel.

She hates him for this, more than she had known was capable.

There are moments, corroded little corners of time snapped off of her bruised psyche, when she understands a the rage Nnoitra had focussed upon her, so very long ago.

And usually it is Nnoitra here, too, in this particularly bitter game of hands and breathing, this particularly hateful wrangling of flesh and invisible voyeurism, and Neliel is already clenching her teeth and clinging to her mind, her gaze averted, because she knows that there is no point fighting it; she's played the game long enough to know you cannot beat an illusion, except by keeping sane and—

—orange hair, a whisper of warm breath, and her body relaxes without her permission; _safe._

“You're beautiful when you're grown, Neliel,” says a voice, and it's a boy, a young man, not Nnoitra this time, and Neliel knows him, and the child in her mind mumbles his name sleepily, lisping the consonants, but that can't be right, can't be right, and the child begins to thrash as the false security is shattered coarsely. The young man's grip tightens, and his teeth bare at her skin andtear._ Ichigo, Ichigo, Ichigo _– the puppetmaster is laughing in Neliel's mind and she sees the white swish of his robes – and the child is screaming and Neliel is clinging to herself to protect it, even as she herself is hurt, and it's not the boy, can't be the boy, the boy was worried about his inner hollow but this, this, this is a monster come to devour her and gnaw at her bones. The child is screaming and the world is blurring and it can't be the boy, can't be, mustn't be, he can't take her, not _him_, not now, not like this, not after all those years, all those years with the trembling pages of her books, and the clean white of her zanpakutō hilt, and everyone else's desires ignored, because she'd not been human enough for that, she'd decided. But the monster has the power, or the puppetmaster does, and her limbs have gone numb, and it hurts, it hurts, it hurts as he pushes against her, bites and rips and _monster, hollow. _

Some fractured part of her psyche, where the child meets the woman and they curl together for shelter, prays, prays, prays (to nothing), that it's the puppermaster playing with her alone, and that this beast Ichigo is only one of his illusions.

Because the boy would never forgive himself.

Forgive...

Grief slides over and, with it, the clear obfuscation of sleep, as Neliel lets go.

The child Nel wakes properly, all tears and snot and wide-eyed incomprehension.

A small room. There are bars on the window, and the unseeing, all-smiling shinigami is standing in the doorway, watching her.

“Nel's cold,” she says petulantly, and the room is too big because she is too tiny, and she feels completely misshapen, shrunken, and she doesn't know why. She's scared for Pesche and Dondochakka, and she doesn't understand why Ichigo hasn't come to save her yet, and the world has gone all wobbly, and stories of the downfall of a town called Karakura don't mean all that much.

The shinigami's smile widens.

“Yer his favourite, ya know,” says the puppetmaster's personal plaything. “Outta everyone caught here, after 'e won, ya just keep on runnin' and runnin'. Strange, innit?”

There's a grown woman sobbing in her sleep, somewhere in the back of Nel's head.

Nel glares at Gin, and calls him a creep.

He just laughs and closes the door behind him as he leaves, and Nel bunches her fists in frustration. She's bored and she's _cranky_.

Time curls when you're sleeping, though, lengthening and shortening and knowing no sense of direction.

...and eventually Neliel re-awakens, and she's moving again, running again, caught back in her firm woman's limbs and her two feet that go where she directs them. There are pine needs beneath her toes, warm and dry, and she's crying dry tears because she knows it's a reprieve, not a pardon. There is nothing but the puppetmaster and his illusions, and herself in her nightmares, and a child in a cell. And so she runs and she runs and she runs, and somewhere in her mind she knows she has no mind, and somewhere the child is sleeping fitfully, and somewhere the words in the books have failed her, and the peace has failed her, and the fight has failed her.

And the puppetmaster has won.


End file.
